


Angels Fall First II: Sanity Frontier

by tfm



Series: Angels Fall First [2]
Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Action/Adventure, Case Fic, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-10-30
Updated: 2010-01-21
Packaged: 2017-10-06 13:19:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 12,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tfm/pseuds/tfm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On a trip to the French Alps, Emily, Morgan, Reid and Rossi find more excitement than they expected. They are forced to draw on their survival skills as they face a threat that they would never have imagined.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Sanity Frontier

** _Holidays are an expensive trial of strength. The only satisfaction comes from survival._ **

_Jonathan Miller_

ONE

‘You have got to be joking.’ Aaron Hotchner paced the office of his superior – Section Chief Erin Strauss. He was too on edge to actually take a seat, and felt that doing so would be akin to letting his guard down in the dragon’s lair.

‘No, Agent Hotchner, I am not joking. Half of your team is on the verge of a nervous breakdown-‘

‘That’s not a clinical diagnosis,’ muttered Hotch under his breath.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Nervous breakdown is a pop psychology term. It has no clinical definition.’ He felt he might have been channelling Reid, pulling out some bit of trivial knowledge in order to distract Strauss.

‘The sentiment remains.’ She looked him in the eye, as if she knew what he was trying to do. ‘Your entire team. One month. Paid vacation.’

‘You need us,’ he said, angrily. He was not prone to antagonising a superior officer, but for Strauss, he would make an exception.

‘There are other teams.’ Strauss seemed unperturbed by his outburst. She had anticipated his reaction, and prepared for it.

‘One week,’ he bargained.

‘One month.’

‘Two weeks.’

‘One month.’

‘Three.’

‘One month.’

He sat then, head in his hands. ‘I don’t think I could handle taking a whole month off,’ he admitted.

‘Then that’s a sure sign that you need it.’

If he had been in a more perceptive mood, Hotch might have noticed that he was experiencing the five stages of grief. He had conquered denial, anger, bargaining, and depression. Only one stage remained, and he would have kicked himself if he had realised that he was taking it.

Acceptance.

He nodded slowly and left the office, ready to inform his team.

*             *             *

Emily Prentiss tapped her fingers on the chair of the psychiatrist’s office. He was making notes on his clipboard – something she didn’t exactly perceive as a good sign.

‘You’re still having nightmares?’ he asked.

‘I was having nightmares before the incident,’ she argued. ‘It comes with the job.’

‘Have they intensified?’

‘Somewhat.’

He made more notes, and continued. ‘I understand you suffered Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from a previous incident. This resulted in,’ he flipped through his notes, until he found the previous case file. ‘”Psychological fragmentation, difficulty regulating emotions, isolation, dissociation...”’ He stopped, letting her memory fill in the blanks. ‘Does that sound familiar?’

‘Yes.’

The session continued for another half an hour, with the psychiatrist asking questions, and Emily answering them almost grudgingly. She had previously attended sessions with a civilian psychiatrist, but this was her first visit to a Bureau employee.

She jumped, startled, when he clicked his pen, indicating that he had finished with his note-taking.

‘You’re showing acute symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,’ he concluded, and she almost sighed with relief. The diagnosis was much better than it could have been. ‘I’d recommend cognitive therapy in this instance.’

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘Cognitive therapy didn’t work out so well last time.’

The psychiatrist flipped his notes and read a short section before nodding. ‘In that case, I can prescribe an SSRI.’ Antidepressants.

‘That’s fine,’ she nodded, though technically, it wasn’t really her decision. He jotted out a prescription, and handed it to her.

‘Make sure you get that filled,’ he reminded her. She nodded. ‘I’d recommend a follow-up session in one month; we’ll see if you’re ready to come back to work. If you have any problems with the medication, don’t hesitate to make an appointment.

*             *             *

While she was in the building, she elected to check in on the team. She found the bullpen surprisingly empty; only Reid was there, and he was packing up to leave.

‘Hey,’ he greeted her. ‘How was the appointment?’

She gave a non-committal shrug. ‘Where is everyone?’

‘Strauss demanded we all take a vacation. Can you believe it?’

‘Vacation.’ She smiled serenely. ‘That sounds nice. We should go somewhere,’ she suggested. She wasn’t specifically looking in Reid’s direction when she said it, but he knew she was expecting him to answer.

‘You’re still on sick leave,’ he pointed out.

‘That’s just bureaucracy. And besides, a holiday’s a great cure.’

Reid had to admit, it did sound pleasant. They exited the building together, discussing possible holiday spots.


	2. Chapter 2

Sanity Frontier

** _Nothing’s better than the wind to your back, the sun in front of you, and your friends beside you._ **

_Aaron Douglas Trimble_

TWO

As luck would have it, Emily and Reid found the remainder of the team still loitering in the basement parking lot. It was almost as though leaving the building would confirm the vacation period that they didn’t feel they needed.

‘Hey,’ Emily greeted Rossi, JJ and Garcia first, not having seen them in several days.

‘We still on for tomorrow night?’ asked Garcia, and Emily blinked, trying to remember.

‘Bar-hopping,’ Garcia reminded her. ‘Since JJ can’t drink us under the table anymore, we’ll have much less pressure.’

JJ raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m not too pregnant to kick your ass,’ she retorted, with some sarcasm.

Emily nodded. ‘I’ll be there,’ she said, not wanting to reveal the psychiatrist’s prescription.

‘So what’s everyone doing on their forced vacation?’ Reid broached the subject, recognising Emily’s sudden mood drop. When they all gave vaguely non-committal answers, he postulated Emily’s suggestion. Morgan seemed rather enthusiastic at the idea, Hotch and Rossi were somewhat reluctant, and JJ and Garcia point-blank refused.

‘I have so many doctors’ appointments in the next month...’ reasoned JJ, not even needing to finish her sentence.

Morgan rounded on Garcia, who responded fairly sheepishly. ‘I’ve been taking ballroom dancing classes with Kevin. I can’t miss any, or we’ll fall behind.’ It was such an unexpected response that JJ, Morgan and Reid all started to chuckle.

‘We’ll forgive you this time,’ grinned Morgan. Garcia left then, followed in rapid succession by Rossi, Hotch and JJ. Emily frowned, and checked her watch.

‘It’s movie night tonight, isn’t it?’ she asked. Since the torturous events of Ridgeview, the three had taken to spending more time together outside of work. Movie night had been the inevitable result; it gave them the chance to unwind without fully forgetting about work. Of course, she hadn’t actually been back to work yet, but spending time with Reid and Morgan at least gave her a connection to the outside world.

‘Yes it is,’ Morgan realised. Then he groaned. ‘It’s Reid’s turn to pick, isn’t it?’ The last time it had been Reid’s turn the pick, they had endured all twelve hours of _The Lord of the Rings_. At least, they had attempted to endure; Morgan had fallen asleep sometime during the Battle of Helmsdeep, and Reid had lasted a little longer, conking out at the Paths of the Dead.

‘Don’t worry,’ smiled Reid. ‘You’ll like this one.

*             *             *

‘_...Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate_.’

None of them had fallen asleep this time. They were instead discussing potential holiday locations.

‘Hawaii?’ suggested Morgan.

‘Oh, you’d like that,’ Emily joked. She’d picked up her prescription on the way home, and she was feeling considerably more approachable. Reid and Morgan were not oblivious to the change in her behaviour.

‘I was thinking more somewhere in Europe,’ commented Reid.

‘Paris,’ smiled Morgan. ‘Romance capital of the world.’

 ‘Is that all you think about?’ Emily asked him.

‘No, I think about sports too. Hey, didn’t your grandfather have that cabin in the French Alps?’

She nodded with some enthusiasm. ‘Nice place. Very quiet.’

‘We could hike up there.’

‘Hike?’ Reid was incredulous. ‘Do you know how many people die in mountaineering accidents every year?’

Emily cut him off before he could answer his own question. ‘I’ve been going up that mountain range since I could walk.’

‘Which range?’

‘Belledonne.’

Morgan, having not studied French Geography, simply nodded. Reid, however, went into one of his classic spiels.

‘Southern end of the Belledonne mountain range surrounds the city of Grenoble. The range itself had 16 peaks exceeding 2500 feet in height.’ He had more information stored in his head, but found it probably would be better reserved for another time.

‘Is that a yes?’ asked Morgan.

Reid sighed. ‘Yes.’

The credits were rolling by that point, and Reid and Emily drifted into an argument about whether or not Deckard was a replicant. Morgan’s response to the discussion was to fall asleep on Emily’s couch, soft snores echoing through the living room. The conversation devolved into a treatise on the identity of the final cylon by Reid, before he, and finally, Emily fell into the dark grip of the sandman.


	3. Chapter 3

Sanity Frontier

** _What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self!_ **

_Nathaniel Hawthorne_

THREE

‘Who the hell booked us on a 5am flight?’ Emily groaned, staring into her coffee.

‘You did,’ supplied Morgan.

‘That sounds about right,’ she sighed. Abruptly, she stood up. ‘I’m going to the bathroom.’

Morgan, Reid and Rossi nodded. Rossi had decided that he would join them after being told of the destination. Hiking sounded more appealing than the sort of vacation he’d expected of them, which had involved cocktails with umbrellas. Hotch had declined, without giving an explanation.

‘What’s she on?’ asked Rossi, as soon as Emily was out of earshot.

‘Escitalopram,’ said Reid immediately. To Morgan’s raised eyebrow, he added, ‘I recognise the side effects.’ As he rattled off the side effects, Morgan’s eyebrows raised further.

‘Do you think she’s up for this?’ he asked to neither of his colleagues in particular.

‘Stubbornness isn’t one of the side effects,’ said Rossi. ‘She’ll be fine,’ he concluded, leaving no room for argument from the younger profilers. His role on the trip could have been seen as a quasi-chaperone.

‘Hey.’ Reid had pulled out his ticket and was studying it intently. ‘These are business-class seats,’ he noted.

‘I got a lot of unused Frequent Flier points,’ grinned Emily, rejoining them in the departure lounge. The grin seemed a little forced, and she dabbed at the corners of her lips unconsciously. Nausea was one of the side effects.

‘I wish they’d hurry up and call the flight,’ she complained. ‘I just want to sleep for the next decade.’ Hypersomnia was also one of the side effects.

*             *             *

She fell asleep almost immediately after they were seated, her next to Rossi, and Reid and Morgan across the aisle. They were somewhat underexposed to commercial flights, and kept feeling the urge to go to the bar fridge, or use electronic equipment.

In lieu of other activity, the three agents still awake pulled out some form of reading material. The bulk of their luggage had been checked, and the contents of their daypacks were sparse; they didn’t need superfluous baggage for the hike ahead. One book each was all they could have afforded to bring. That, and intermittent conversation was enough to last them the flight to the Charles de Gaulle International Airport.

*             *             *

Reid, Morgan and Rossi stood back as their colleague negotiated train tickets in rapid French. The train would take them to Grenoble, whereupon they could begin the real adventure.

On the train, Emily fell asleep yet again, and Reid, Rossi and Morgan played cards. As it turned out, Rossi could bluff well; after he had lost the fifth hand in a row, Morgan decided that it would be in his best interests to change games.

‘Chess?’ suggested Reid, pulling out a cheap travel board. He had bought it knowing full well that he would probably have to throw it out at one point to make room for more important things.

‘Chess is only a two-player game,’ Morgan reminded him. Reid nodded, obviously aware.

‘We can take turns,’ he said.

‘It’s alright,’ Rossi assured him. ‘Chess was never my style.’ He pulled out his book, and turned to where he had stopped reading on the plane. Beside him, Reid and Morgan began their battle of wits.

*             *             *

_She could feel the pain arcing up her spine. Electric tingles. One burst, then another. She could see his smiling face. He had always worn a mask, but she could still feel him grinning. Grinning from beyond the grave. He had done it for the power; he wanted to feel in control. So strong were these desires that even from beyond the grave, he was still in control._

_She felt the knife this time. Slicing across her chest, blood seeping from the wound. She felt him doing things she couldn’t even remember him doing. Thumbscrews, foot presses. Bones shattering, skin raw and screaming._

_The pain. The pain. Even in her sleep, she couldn’t escape it. Because he was always in control._

*             *             *

She took a few seconds to evaluate her surroundings, careful to keep her face free from the pain and terror she was feeling. She really ought to take another pill; she had the distinct feeling she might have accidentally skipped one.

‘Sleep well?’ asked Rossi, noticing her movement.

She shrugged, and put a hand in her bag, searching for the pill bottle.

‘You got water?’ asked Morgan, looking up from a chess game that he was badly losing.

She blinked. She had not been expecting it, but now that it had come, she was not at all surprised. They were, after all, trained in noticing behaviour.

‘Yeah, I’ve got some.’ She swallowed the pill with a gulp. Then, she looked out the window. She had slept for longer than she’d realised. ‘We’re almost there.’ She had seen that scenery so many times, it was like an old friend she had left behind. The sun was rising over the mountains in the distances, the sky stained red, as if with blood.

*             *             *

Pragmatically, they couldn’t start the hike up the mountain until the next day; they still had to purchase the supplies that they couldn’t bring through customs, and recover from the actual travelling.

They booked two motel rooms for the night, payment carefully counted out in cash by Reid, who had taken it upon himself to manage the finances. The person at the front desk handed them two sets of keys.

Upstairs, Emily relieved Reid of a set of keys, and dumped her backpack and daypack in one of the rooms. Reid, Rossi and Morgan hesitated only briefly, but it was enough for her to poke her head out of the door and look at them sternly.

‘You can stop walking on eggshells, alright?’ She retreated back into the room, leaving the door open for whoever was planning to follow her.

Morgan grinned and took the initiative, leaving Rossi and Reid to the remaining room.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

Sanity Frontier

** _Silence is golden when you can't think of a good answer._ **

_Muhammad Ali_

FOUR

The city of Grenoble had a significant number of outdoors shops, catering to the hiking, mountaineering and skiing crowd that frequented the surrounding landscape. Morgan felt somewhat out of his depth, having never undertaken such a serious hiking trip. He looked around himself in apprehension.

‘People will really buy all these things just for a hiking trip?’ He directed the question to Reid, who was attempting to decipher the French on a package of thermal underwear.

Instead of answering the question directly, Reid chose to overburden Morgan with a series of facts. ‘An outdoor activities group known as the Mountaineers postulated a list of ten essentials for any serious hiking trip.’

‘What exactly are these ten essentials?’

‘Map, compass, sunglasses and sunscreen, extra food and water, extra clothes, a torch, first-aid kit, fire starters, matches and a knife. Though, they also recommended supplementary equipment...’ he trailed off as Rossi and Prentiss returned from the counter with their purchases. The two were significantly more experienced in the field, and knew what they needed and what they didn’t.

‘We all set?’ asked Morgan.

They were, in fact, all set. It was only 10am Grenoble time; they still had at least seven hours to visit the city’s tourist hotspots.

*             *             *

‘You’ve been to all these places before?’ asked Rossi, as Reid and Morgan attempted to find their location on a map of the city.

‘Yeah, but twenty years ago. I think I spent more time trying to sneak off for a cigarette than actually checking out the city.’

Reid put the map away, with a triumphant look on his face. Emily had found it considerably more entertaining to see if they could manage to navigate the city without her help. The result had been an interesting yet ultimately long-winded tour of the city’s main attractions.

It was almost dark when they returned to the motel, and Morgan immediately posed what he felt was a very important question.

‘So where’s the night-life hang in this city?’

She winked at him in reply. ‘I only know about the places that don’t check ID. In any case, we need to get up early tomorrow.’

He attempted a compromise. ‘Just a few rounds? My shout.’

‘Alcohol will play havoc with my medication,’ she reminded him, and he pouted.

“Dinner with the possibility of drinks both alcoholic and non-alcoholic” was the option that was finally settled on. They were lacking in going out clothes, so an informal location was chosen. Ironically, the location in question was actually one of the places that didn’t check ID. She mentioned this casually, as they perused the menus.

Reid maintained a rudimentary knowledge of French – it was enough to be able to read the menu, but poorly lacking when it came to ordering. The waiter, for lack of a better word, seemed insulted at the language that had just left the young genius’s mouth. Emily held back a laugh.

‘What were you trying to ask?’

‘Can they make the _coq au vin_ without mushrooms?’

Emily repeated the question in French, and the waiter gave an enthusiastic nod, his fears of ignorant Americans somewhat diminished by Emily’s near perfect French.

Morgan and Rossi had less trouble with ordering, having mastered the “point at the dish you want” method. The waiter nodded, and relieved them of their menus.

‘You just ordered frog’s legs,’ Emily whispered to Morgan. His eyes widened at his mistake. ‘Don’t worry,’ she assured him. ‘They taste fine. Until they start kicking in your stomach.’

He pushed at her playfully. ‘Now I know you’re just messing with me.’

The rest of the meal went off without a hitch, Morgan thoroughly enjoying his accidental dish. They left early, as there was still packing to be done. It had been a good day. They didn’t know it, but it would be the last good day they would have for a while. Something dark was looming over the horizon.


	5. Chapter 5

Sanity Frontier

** _Roam abroad in the world, and take thy fill of its enjoyments before the day shall come when thou must quit it for good._ **

_Saadi_

FIVE

It was a struggle for Reid not to be overturned by the massive pack on his back.

‘You right there, kid?’ asked Morgan, who was having no such troubles with his own pack.

‘I can’t believe people do this for fun,’ he laughed. In spite of his misgivings, he was enjoying himself. They all were.

‘You’re absolutely sure you know where you’re going?’ Morgan asked for the hundredth time.

‘Yes,’ she answered emphatically for, again, the hundredth time. ‘Besides, if we get lost, I have the GPS locator. And if you lose me, Dave has the sat phone.’

‘Is that likely?’

‘What?’

‘Losing you?’

‘You know, I had the strangest urge just to ditch you and go skiing.’ They shared a laugh. It felt good to laugh properly; with all the crap that had been going down lately, laughter had been one of those things in short supply.

At around 10am, they stopped briefly, looking back to see how far they’d come. ‘Nice view,’ commented Morgan. Rossi, however, was looking the opposite way – in the direction they were travelling.

‘How far is it?’

‘Maybe ten miles, as the crow flies. A little longer for us.’

Rossi kept looking, apparently searching for any sign of the cabin itself.

‘If solitude’s what you want, it’s very easy to stay hidden up here,’ she said simply. Reid took it upon himself to elaborate.

‘The Belledonne mountain range has a diverse range of alpine land types and uses. The range is approximately 60 kilometers long by between 10 kilometers and 16 kilometers wide. The range is delineated by several valleys which lie at relatively low altitude, including the Grèsivaudan on the west, Arc to the north and the Romanche to the south. There are 10 glaciers, and 26 alpine lakes.’

‘That sounds straight out of Wikipedia,’ grinned Morgan.

‘It is,’ admitted Reid. ‘I couldn’t find any books on the range itself. None in English, anyway.’

‘It’d be pretty hard to find the cabin unless you were looking for it,’ clarified Emily. ‘It’s well off any of the designated paths, so unless you like to wander, you’re not going to stumble upon it.’

‘Any game meats, or will we be fishing?’ the hunter in Rossi asked.

‘Grouse and chamois are the main ones. Do you have experience?’

‘Hunting in general, yes. Grouse and chamois, not so much.’

They started walking again soon, the city of Grenoble slowly vanishing behind them, blocked by the mountain range. Emily was concentrating on not getting them lost, Rossi had vanished deep into thought, and Reid and Morgan were engaged in an ambitious game of I-Spy.

‘Mountain?’

‘No.’

‘Well that’s the only thing starting with M that I see.’

‘Keep guessing.’

He did, and it eventually got to a point where his answers were bordering on ludicrous.

‘Maturity.’

‘You can’t guess abstract terms.’

‘Marmot,’ called Emily from the front of the group.

‘No,’ replied Reid, amused at the frustration on Morgan’s face.

‘What’s a marmot?’ he asked, momentarily distracted.

Reid pointed a little further up the mountain, where a small rodent could be seen, seemingly oblivious to their presence.

‘Looks like some kind of rat-squirrel,’ commented Morgan.

‘Funny you should say that. Some people believe that it was Marmots, and not the rats that were carriers of the bubonic plague during the Black Death.’

‘Right, right. So what was the answer, pretty boy? Something beginning with M?’

‘Massif.’

‘”Solid mass?”’ came a voice from the front.

Reid spoke a little louder this time, so that he could be heard properly. ‘It’s also a word used to describe a large mountain mass or compact group of connected mountains forming an independent portion of a range.’

‘You’re a regular fountain of knowledge today.’

‘Just like every day,’ Emily called back, not missing a beat.

‘I’ve been reading up on the area.’ He attempted to rationalize his knowledge, but to no avail.

*             *             *

They didn’t see the cabin until they were almost right on top of it; Emily had been right, it was well hidden. A series of low cliffs hid it from the top, and trees littered the valley below.

It was almost dark when they finally managed to take off the heavy packs that seemed to have swelled in size since the morning. Morgan attempted to get a fire started as the other three drank liberally from their water bottles.

‘Looks good for a place that hasn’t been lived in for twenty years,’ commented Rossi.

‘My cousin used to come up once a year – check everything was still going smoothly. He died a few years back. I don’t think anyone’s been here since.’

Morgan frowned. ‘The embers in the fireplace look fresh.’

‘What do you mean?’

He pulled back in order to let them see. ‘I think someone’s been here sometime in the last week.’


	6. Chapter 6

Sanity Frontier

** _Don't fall before you're pushed._ **

_English Proverb_

SIX

‘It could be nothing,’ suggested Rossi.

‘It’s not nothing,’ Emily argued. ‘In the two decades my grandfather lived here, none of the hundreds of tourists who come up here ever found it. I called my mother before we came. She says no-one’s been here in years.’ She had adopted a strained tone of voice, one that Morgan had come to associate with unexpected stressful events and mild paranoia.

‘Hey.’ He put a hand on her shoulder, and she visibly relaxed. ‘Calm down. We’ll check it out.’ He reached for his hip, before realising that he was in a foreign country, and therefore unarmed.

‘I think there’re at least two shotguns hidden around the place,’ Emily interpreted his gesture. The first hiding place – below a loose floorboard – was empty.

‘It’s interesting,’ remarked Reid. ‘He was so isolated, and yet still felt the need to hide the shotgun.’

‘Could you give me a leg up?’ she asked Morgan. He complied, lifting her towards the rafters. She swung up talking as she went.

‘Running away from the world...I think he thought he had something to fear. Paranoid, right to the last. He never told anyone where the second gun was hidden. I think he was afraid that we were all against him too. One last defence.’ She pried a plank of wood free from the wall. ‘Be thankful of my boundless curiosity.’ She pried another plank free, and felt around inside the gap that she had created. There was a long wooden box inside the gap, clasped shut. She pulled the box out, and handed it down to Rossi.

She jumped down from the rafters, landing heavily.

‘Who’s got the ice pick?’

Morgan did, apparently – at the very bottom of his pack. Emily looked incredulously at some of the things he emptied out to get to it. She was about to say something, but he silenced her with a glance. When it was finally found, he threw the ice pick to Reid.

‘Do you want the axe?’

‘No, you take it.’

‘Morgan’ll just tackle the guy,’ Reid said.

‘What kind of self-defence instructor would I be if I needed an axe to fight off someone?’ He threw a few fake punches at Reid, the young agent ducking back cautiously.

‘We don’t even know if anyone’s here. And even if they are, we don’t know if they’re hostile,’ pointed out Rossi. ‘We should do this carefully.’ It was true; they had jumped to the conclusion that there was an immediate threat. It was a side effect of their line of work.

‘There’s a downstairs?’

‘For storage, mostly.’ She pulled a torch out of her own pack. ‘It’s pretty dark down there though.’

Rossi motioned for Reid to go with her. ‘We’ll check out the rest of this level.’

Though they were outside the office, the senior agent still managed to assume a leadership role. This role was further exemplified by the Remington 870 he cradled in his arms. He had come a long way from being the lone ranger of the team.

‘Be careful,’ whispered Emily, slowly descending the staircase. ‘Staircase is pretty steep.’

‘What? Hey, do you smell that?’

‘I said the staircase is steep, so be careful.’ It seemed somewhat cliché and highly ironic that he chose that moment to trip. He fell into her, sending them both tumbling down into the darkness.

*             *             *

‘Fuck. Ow.’ They were the first two words that came into her head, and considering, she felt that they were highly appropriate.

‘Are you alright?’

‘Yeah, but you’re lying on my arm. You?’

‘Yeah. Sorry.’ They scrambled about in the darkness. She had dropped the torch somewhere. And the axe. She swore under her breath; it was a miracle the damn thing wasn’t embedded in her chest.

‘Are you alright?’ Morgan’s concerned voice came from the patch of light above.

‘Yeah, we’re good.’ Her hand searched for the torch, finally grasping it several feet from where they lay. The light had gone off during the fall. She bashed it a few times, trying to get the circuits to connect. They did, finally, and she panned the torch across the room. Whatever she had been expecting to see, this wasn’t it. Neither was Reid, judging by the strange noise he made under his breath.

Bodies. A dozen at least. Most seemed relatively well preserved, the alpine environment preventing decay.

‘It’s cold in here.’ She was talking, but her brain didn’t register having sent the commands to talk. ‘So cold. Their eyes. So much fear in them. They knew they were going to die. I thought...I thought I was going to die.’

Reid didn’t say anything. He knew from experience how well it felt to let that burden off your shoulders. They were too busy absorbing the silence to notice the knife-wielding man lunge from the shadows.


	7. Chapter 7

Sanity Frontier

** _To die is nothing; but it is terrible not to live._ **

_Victor Hugo_

SEVEN

Emily pushed Reid to the ground; she had reacted marginally quicker than him. Their assailant came after them again, knife swinging wildly. He had a crazed look in his eyes, as if he wasn’t all there. The only weapon she had at hand was the torch.

 She aimed for his hands, looking to knock the knife out of his grip.

‘Get the others,’ she told Reid between gritted teeth. Knocking the knife from his hands hadn’t worked particularly well; they were now caught in a struggle for the knife itself. The struggle ended when the gun-wielding Rossi knocked him out with the stock of the Remington.

‘Are you okay?’ Reid helped her up, feeling somewhat guilty at not being able to help before.

‘He didn’t do this.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Look at his wrists – he’s been restrained.’ She shone the torch over the unconscious man’s wrists. ‘He wasn’t the killer, he was the next victim.’

‘Killer? Wait, what’s going on?’

Emily remembered at that point that they hadn’t actually seen the bodies. She lifted the light, and showed Rossi and Morgan what they had discovered.

‘Like I said.’ She knelt down next to the man, checking his pulse. ‘He didn’t do this.’ She felt a wet patch. ‘Why is there blood on the ground? I didn’t realise he was hurt that badly.’

‘He isn’t,’ Rossi pointed out. ‘You are.’ The knife had sliced through fabric and skin, leaving a gaping wound. ‘Reid, go get the first aid kit.’

‘Whose pack is it in?’

‘Mine,’ said Emily, frowning. She put a hand on the wound. There didn’t seem to be any pain at all.

‘Put pressure on it,’ a voice seemed to be saying, but she wasn’t really listening.

‘Emily. Emily, snap out of it.’

She jumped back to reality, and immediately felt the pain. It wasn’t bad pain. It felt like more of an inconvenience than anything else.

‘Seriously, I’m fine,’ she protested as they dressed the wound. ‘Take care of this guy.’

They returned upstairs, taking solace in the fact that they were finally able to start a fire.

*             *             *

They gave the only bed in the house to the man they’d knocked unconscious. It seemed the thing to do. Further investigation showed that he was on the verge of starvation, and had broken the bonds that restrained him.

‘Heard a noise, attacked the first thing he saw,’ postulated Morgan.

‘Which happened to be us,’ concluded Reid.

‘Which happened to be you,’ agreed Morgan.

‘We need to figure out what we’re going to do.’ Rossi took the initiative. He laid out the facts straight. ‘We’re in a cabin on a mountain, twenty miles from the check-in point, with thirteen bodies downstairs, and a kidnapped tourist with a concussion.’

‘Also,’ added Reid, almost enthusiastically, ‘There could be a deranged serial killer lurking the area.’

‘We need to contact the French authorities,’ said Emily decidedly. She had come to the realisation that it probably wasn’t the best idea to mix painkillers and anti-depressants, so she’d avoided the painkillers. The pain had increased since its first inception, and she tried very hard to keep the grimace off her face.

Rossi found the satellite phone in his pack, and gave the answer to the question that none of them had been willing to ask.

‘It’s broken.’

He had taken a slight fall in their hike this morning, and they had assumed that his pack’s contents had made it out relatively intact. It was a bad day to be wrong.

‘We need to walk back.’ Emily didn’t hold back the grimace this time – the thought of that walk made her feel nauseous, though the drugs probably didn’t help.

‘You’re not walking anywhere,’ said Rossi. ‘Reid, do you think you could remember the way back?’

‘In the dark?’ pressed Morgan. At the looks from the others, he elaborated. ‘Whoever killed those people could be back at any moment. We need to get moving right now.’

‘You volunteering?’

Morgan hesitated, torn between the two options. ‘Yeah,’ he said finally. ‘I’ll go.’

‘You should eat first. Get your strength up.’

They set off after their impromptu dinner, emptying their packs of all but the essentials – they needed to maximise efficiency.

‘Take the GPS,’ Emily instructed. It was still on the ground from when Reid had searched through her pack, looking desperately for the first aid kit. She’d repack it later.

‘You should get some sleep,’ suggested Rossi, immediately after Reid and Morgan had left. He had taken position at the front door, Remington in arms.

Stubbornness and tiredness vied for top position, but in the end, tiredness won out.

‘Wake me if anything – _anything­_ – happens.’ She didn’t particularly feel like sleeping through the excitement, especially if it meant getting Rossi killed.

 


	8. Chapter 8

Sanity Frontier

** _An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered._ **

_G. K. Chesterton_

EIGHT

It had been ten minutes since Reid and Morgan had left the cabin, a couple of torches as their only light. Rossi was the ever vigilant sentry, ears attuned to every sound. He was multi-tasking, though. Trying to pin down a profile for the serial killer who was haunting the mountains. It was a difficult task – they had no idea who the victims were, when they disappeared, how they disappeared. The four agents had briefly examined the bodies; Reid had theorised that, taking the preservation into account, some of the corpses were up to three years old. Organized offender – he made sure the bodies weren’t found. They were restrained, killed methodically. He would have to be either strong enough to incapacitate his victims, or charming enough to lure them to the cabin. The bodies were a mixture of genders, so Rossi assumed the former.

It wasn’t as though a profile would do them a world of good – there was no database they could run it against, no suspects to interrogate. They really were isolated from everything they ever knew.

He jerked, hearing an unfamiliar sound. His eyes scanned the room, falling upon the unconscious man on the camp bed next to the fire. At least, he had been unconscious – he was stirring now. Rossi took the calculated risk of setting down the rifle. He found a water bottle and pressed it into the man’s hands.

‘It’s okay,’ he assured him. ‘It’s okay.’

The man looked at him, confused. ‘_No entiendo_.’

Rossi recognised Spanish. He knew little Spanish beyond a few key phrases. ‘_¿Hablas inglés?’_

‘_No.’_

‘_Un momento_.’

He moved over to Emily, who was already in a light sleep. He knew she would want to be woken, but it didn’t stop him from hesitating.

He put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Emily.’

‘Yeah?’ she replied almost instantaneously, having perfected an almost seamless transition from sleep to wake.

‘The victim’s awake.’

‘Yeah?’ she sat up, leg throbbing in pain.

‘He only speaks Spanish.’ His tone was somewhat apologetic, and with good reason.

‘This is what I get for minoring in Linguistics,’ she muttered, though it was not in a particularly irritated tone.

Rossi returned to his duties as his younger colleague questioned the frightened Spanish man.

*             *             *

He had been watching them for a few hours now. At first he thought it had been some kind of mistake, that they weren’t even going to the cabin at all, but were taking a roundabout route to the nearby lake. He was angry – offended, almost – when he realised that, no, they _were_ going to his cabin. They were going to ruin everything.

He had seen the two men leave by the light of their torches. They would have found the bodies, and they would be going to tell someone. They were going to ruin everything.

He could still fix things though. It was dark now, and they had split up. He couldn’t have taken all four of them – five, if you included the Spanish tourist, which he didn’t – but two he could deal with. Which two, was the question.

He shuffled in his position, and turned around. ‘_So_,’ he said to his companion. ‘_Which two do you want to take_?’

‘_It doesn’t bother me_,’ came the reply, and after a moment’s discussion, the two separated, one heading in the direction of the cabin, one, the base of the mountain. It was going to be an interesting night.


	9. Chapter 9

Sanity Frontier

** _You have no control over what the other guy does. You only have control over what you do._ **

_A. J. Kitt_

NINE

‘He says there are two of them,’ Emily whispered lowly to Rossi, casting a quick glance around the room. Paranoia had taken hold of her yet again. ‘They left earlier today – hunting, he thinks. That means they’ll be armed, Dave.’

‘It doesn’t make sense. They should have been back before dark...unless they already know we’re here.’

Emily’s mouth opened in horror. ‘They would have seen Morgan and Reid leave. They could be dead already.’

‘There’s nothing we can do about that now.’ Rossi had adopted a tone of rationality, despite his fear for Reid and Morgan. He was being pragmatic; the last thing they should be doing was running out into the dark where they would get killed.

She was about to open her mouth to speak, when he held up a hand. ‘Do you hear that?’

‘No, what-‘

‘Get down!’ He pulled her down, just as a heavy caliber bullet slammed through the door. By the fire, the Spanish man made a loud whimpering noise. He began scrambling about, looking for a source of comfort.

“Get away from the door,” Rossi mouthed. He didn’t know how far away the shooter was, and he sure as hell didn’t want to give any clues as to where in the cabin they were. Neither of them thought to pay any attention to the Spanish man. He was frantic, now, muttering the same phrase over and over again. He grabbed a log from the fire – then, Rossi noticed him.

‘What’s he saying?’

Emily listened to the garbled words. ‘House of death.’ His intentions struck them almost immediately. He held the lit log against the pile of firewood, where it caught ablaze before Rossi could stop him.

‘We don’t have time to put it out. We need to get out of here. We can use the fire as a distraction.’ Emily nodded, grabbing at her pack, half its contents still strewn about the floor. Rossi grabbed his own pack, and the axe next to the fireplace. The fire was slowly spreading, and another bullet struck the door.

‘Take this, grab him.’ Rossi handed Emily the Remington, and motioned her towards the Spanish man. He grabbed the axe in both hands and struck at the wall. The cabin was fairly old, and the wood weakening in places; it took a few good solid blows to knock a hole in the wall.

‘What if he heard it?’ asked Emily. The fire was crackling loudly, and the sound could have been attributed to structural damage.

‘Just be ready,’ said Rossi decidedly. He stepped through the hole, trusty Remington back in his hands. The Spanish man relinquished Emily’s grip, and ran back towards the fire.

‘What are you doing?’ she said, forgetting that he couldn’t understand a single word of what she said.

_‘Casa de la muerte_._’ _Emily stared, shocked, as he dove into the fire, his screams haunting the night.


	10. Chapter 10

Sanity Frontier

** _Fortune can, for her pleasure, fools advance,   
And toss them on the wheels of Chance._ **

_Juvenal_

TEN

Reid and Morgan had barely started their trek down the mountain range when they began to feel that something wasn’t quite right. Morgan thought he was being watched, and not just by any nocturnal beasts – no, these were human eyes watching. He put a hand on Reid’s shoulder, silently indicating that they should stop.

They stood still and silent. Both states were soon broken by a muffled gunshot in the distance. ‘The cabin,’ they both said in unison, and broke into a run, all but oblivious to the all consuming darkness. It had been a toss-up between being shot by a murderous unsub, and falling down a mountain. Neither had been particularly eager to make the choice, but they came to the conclusion that they would use the torches if they desperately needed them; there was sufficient moonlight to see the path ahead of them.

It was fortunate that they had moved, for no sooner than they had, a second crack split the air. This one was closer – aimed at them. Unconsciously, they split apart, running in different directions, though both quite distinctly away from the second gunshot.

After what felt like hours worth of jogging desperately, Morgan finally came to a halt. He’d tripped twice in his mad attempt at escape, recovering quickly both times. In his haste, he had completely lost track of Reid. And his own location, for that matter. He might as well have been trapped on Saturn. He looked around for a sign, any sign. Something to indicate where he was, and where he needed to be. The answer he found was not at all comforting.

A steady plume of smoke rose gently into the night air

*              *              *

Reid noticed the smoke at about the same time as Morgan. He had been so focussed on his own retreat that he hadn’t noticed the growing stench, the thickening air. There was no doubt that the source of the smoke was the cabin. It was heavy smoke, not the kind from a chimney, but the kind you get when a building is steadily ablaze. Half a dozen sets of statistics ran through his head. _In 2004, fire killed more citizens of the United States than all other natural disasters combined. In just three and a half minutes, the heat from a fire can reach over 1100 degrees Fahrenheit._

He began to run again, paying close attention to his surroundings; Rossi or Emily might have escaped, and he wanted to be ready to give medical attention. The thought crossed his mind that there had been two gunshots, a mile apart at least. Two killers. It was another reason to pay close attention.

The close observation paid off. No more than forty feet ahead of him, two men were partially silhouetted against the raging inferno. They were yelling to each other over the sound of the fire, though, from what he could tell, it wasn’t angry yelling. He inched forward slowly, keen to hear the conversation without them noticing him.

French. They were speaking French, he knew that much. Something about a man and a woman – Rossi and Emily, he assumed – escaping. He hoped that was the word he had heard. Direction? Which direction had they gone? One of the men pointed further along the mountain range, into the cluster of trees that lay at the base of the cabin.

‘I don’t know how he didn’t spot us, running like maniacs,’ whispered Morgan from behind. Reid jumped backwards.

‘Do you really think it’s wise to scare me like that, Morgan?’ Reid said, exasperated. They continued to watch. The men seemed content to let the cabin burn – it wasn’t as though there was anything they could do. There was a firebreak between the cabin and the tree cluster, enough that there was a very low chance of the fire spreading.

‘They’re going after them,’ commented Reid. He did not need to specify which “theys” he was referring to. The implication was clear.

‘Why them?’ Morgan seemed somewhat offended. ‘They’re not going to just let us run havoc.’

‘Maybe they know Rossi’s got the shotgun. Get the only armed opponent out of the way first.’

‘We need to follow them too,’ said Reid decidedly.

Morgan agreed almost immediately. ‘We can’t just abandon them. Help can wait. We take care of our own.’

So the two agents set off in pursuit of two serial killers who were in turn chasing Rossi and Emily. All in all, it was a very macabre game of follow the leader.


	11. Chapter 11

Sanity Frontier

** _Adversity does teach who your real friends are._ **

_Lois McMaster Bujold_

ELEVEN

Breakneck speed was dangerously close to becoming more than just a metaphor as Emily and Rossi crashed through the woods beyond the cabin. They were so used to running in pursuit of an unsub; it felt unusual to be running _from _one. Rossi began to put the brakes on himself as he heard Emily slowing down ahead of him.

‘We can’t keep running all night,’ she said decidedly, huffing only slightly.

‘Do you know of any good hiding places?’

By the light of the moon, he could see her grinning. ‘When you’re eight years old and staying with relatives, hide and seek is the most fundamental form of entertainment. Dangerous as hell, though. Especially at night.’ She waited a few moments, letting her eyes adjust to the light, and then took in their surroundings.

‘Know a good place?’

She nodded. ‘Three years running, no-one ever found me. I suppose it helps when there’s over two hundred square miles of mountain.’ She stopped talking then, apprehensive of anyone that might be following them. The barrel of the gun might have already been aligned. They moved quietly, dreading every footstep too loud, every branch broken.

The cave entrance would have been hard to stumble upon, even in the daytime. For all the effort that must have gone into finding it, it wasn’t the most spectacular of dwellings. Six people might have fit in there somewhat comfortably, but they would have to duck.

Rossi put his pack and the shotgun on the ground, and sat. Twenty years ago, a workout like that wouldn’t have fazed him. In the future he would attempt to stick to brisk walks. His fingers brushed the ground, feeling cold rock and the occasional cigarette butt. ‘Yours?’ he asked, holding up one of the aforementioned butts.

‘What is it?’ In the nigh total darkness, she couldn’t even see his hand, let alone what it was holding.

‘Cigarette butt.’

‘They should have decomposed by now,’ she frowned.

‘Preserved by the weather. You should be more considerate of the environment,’ he scolded her with some amusement.

‘I’ll plant a tree back at Quantico,’ she replied scathingly.

‘You get some rest. I’ll keep watch.’ She wanted to decline his offer, she really did, but her perpetual exhaustion was at a high point. Her leg was throbbing in agonising pain, something she tried to keep to herself at all costs. The last thing she needed was him carrying her.

Rossi handed her a small penlight from the side of his pack; the two torches they had brought with them were with Morgan and Reid, hopefully on their way back to civilisation. Emily looked through her pack, examining what she had managed to bring in their mad dash out of the burning cabin. Sleeping bag. Sleeping mat. Rope. Cooking pot. First aid kit. Food. She unpacked the sleeping bag and mat, hyperaware of one important absence. This too she kept to herself.

Despite the fear, the pain, the worry, sleep seemed to wash over her instantly, though that too was not without its recurring torrents.


	12. Chapter 12

Sanity Frontier

** _All sanity depends on this: that it should be a delight to feel heat strike the skin, a delight to stand upright, knowing the bones are moving easily under the flesh._ **

_Doris Lessing_

TWELVE

Derek Morgan awoke with the morning sun. He had handed over sentry duty to Reid at 3am, and curled in for what amounted to a long nap. He checked his watch and groaned at what he saw. Some holiday this was turning out to be.

They had stopped for the night, confident that those they were pursuing would have decided to wait until morning to hunt Rossi and Emily. Hopefully, their suspicions were correct. In any case, tracking their progress would be relatively simple; fresh snow had fallen the day before, untouched but for the trudging of feet. On the other hand, that also meant that Rossi and Emily were similarly trackable, providing that the strangers had gone the right way in the first place. It was all a great big game of chance, and no-one knew where the wheel had landed.

They packed up their gear, ready to move out. They didn’t know how far behind they were, and felt no real urge to let the lead increase.

*              *              *

Emily woke up irritable, and it was no surprise. Having been unable to find it in her pack the previous night, she had the sinking feeling that her antidepressants had burnt to a crisp in a certain cabin fire.

‘Are you alright?’

‘I’m fine,’ she snapped in reply, and immediately regretted it. ‘Sorry.’

‘Pills missing?’ He really didn’t miss a trick.

‘Yeah.’ She searched through the pack again, painstakingly removing every item, and then replacing it. The pills were indeed nowhere to be found. ‘There’s nothing we can do about it now,’ she finally said. ‘But we are going to have to think of a plan. We can’t just run away from this.’

‘Sounds like every problem.’

The plan they settled on was a baited ambush. Practically unarmed and injured, Emily realised almost immediately that, naturally, she was going to be the bait. It always seemed to happen that way.

‘They won’t shoot you on sight,’ Rossi reassured her. ‘You saw the bodies, they likes a slow death. Painful. Tormenting.’

Images of the past flashed through her mind, brought on by low levels of serotonin. Phantom pains passed gracelessly through her body in a crippling wave. Screams that were not her own echoed in her ears. Screaming for help. She closed her eyes. Torment was nothing new.

*              *              *

It seemed ironic that she had half a packet of cigarettes at the bottom of the pack, and yet no Escitalopram. She took a couple of painkillers to calm the raging pain in her leg, and lit one up, taking great care to be as liberal with the smoke as possible; she wanted to be seen. To be fair, they hadn’t made the trap blindingly obvious. To the naked eye, the inexperienced hiker, she was hidden quite well, but to someone who knew these mountains even half as well as she did...

Rossi had felt confident in choosing his own ambush spot. A lifelong hunter, he knew what was visible to the eye and what wasn’t. He shuffled in place, wanting to make sure that he wouldn’t be seen. If he had known the mountain better, perhaps his chances at finding a suitably safe hiding spot would have increased. As it stood, though, Dave Rossi took several steps backward in order to get a better view and promptly fell off a cliff.

*              *              *

Emily heard Rossi’s strangled cries, and immediately swore. The one cliff edge and he had to go and fall off it. To be fair, she had neglected to mention it to him; it was barely a ten foot drop. He could have survived it with nary a broken bone.

She heard something else – voices, muttering away to each other in French. Perfect timing. Rossi had fallen off a cliff, and she was stuck there as bait with no follow up. She had the axe still. Compared to two rifles, it was nothing.

There were muted footsteps as they rounded the corner. She struck out with the axe, hoping to God that it wasn’t Morgan or Reid. The blade caught one of them in the arm. It stuck, blood spurting from the wound. They hadn’t been expecting any resistance. It gave some merit to the basic idea of the trap, but further emphasised its poor execution. The man roared in pain, uninjured hand grasping at the axe’s handle. He had dropped his rifle, and Emily went to retrieve it before the second man could react.

The wood stock caught her across the back of the skull.


	13. Chapter 13

Sanity Frontier

** _Things do not change; we change._ **

_Henry David Thoreau_

THIRTEEN

She felt dizzy, blood rushing to the head at light speed. A strange wetness seeped across the back of her skull, matting her hair. She put a hand up to her head, and it came away red and dripping. The last thing she remembered was being knocked across the back of the head; why hadn’t they hit her again? Why wasn’t she dead, or at the very least unconscious?

The answer was, of course, the very much needed presence of Reid and Morgan. Together they had knocked out the Frenchman with the arm wound, and were attempting to incapacitate the other one. To be more accurate, Morgan was grappling him, and Reid was jumping about, trying not to get in the way.

Rossi? Where was Rossi? The cliff.

‘Reid?’ It hurt so much to talk. Even to think. He was at her side in a second, overcome with concern.

‘Rossi, he...we were trying to ambush...I think he fell off the cliff.’ Reid’s eyes widened in surprise at both the statement and Emily’s almost cavalier attitude.

‘Small cliff, usually a pretty soft landing, but...’ she trailed off as the dizziness returned. She closed her eyes for what felt like just a few seconds. When she opened them though, a concerned Morgan was standing over her, blood streaking his face.

‘I think you’ve got a minor concussion,’ he seemed to be saying. Her head was clearing now, enough to vocalise the thought that was running through her mind.

‘This has been one hell of a year.’

*             *             *

‘Rossi? Rossi?’ Reid ran along the edge of the cliff, taking care not to slip.

‘Down here.’ The voice came from, below, perhaps forty feet from where he was standing.

‘Are you alright?’ Reid made his way towards the voice, eventually stopping when he could go no further. He stood at the top of the cliff, and a battered Rossi at the bottom.

‘A severe case of impaired pride, I think.’ He frowned, and then added. ‘Possibly some broken bones as well.’

‘I’m coming down.’ Reid looked for the best way to descend the cliff, apart from the undesirable route Rossi had taken.

‘Emily, is she...?’ Rossi felt a wave of guilt wash over himself. If she was dead because of his foolishness, then he might never forgive himself.

‘We got there just as they were attacking her. There was some head trauma, but probably nothing above a Grade II concussion.’ He stopped talking, so that he could concentrate fully on the positioning of his hands and feet. If he fell down the cliff now, he’d never hear the end of it from Morgan.

After several painstaking minutes, he finally reached the bottom, no worse for wear. Immediately, he examined Rossi’s injuries.

‘Dislocated shoulder.’ That one was fairly obvious – the shoulder was quiet visibly displaced. ‘Some damage to the leg – I can’t really diagnose without an X-ray. Can you walk on it?’ Rossi tested the leg, feeling immediate strain, but no debilitating inhibitions.

‘We will need to reduce the shoulder, though.’ He examined the arm hesitantly, as if unsure what to do.

‘I think you’ve gotta push,’ suggested Rossi.

‘Closed reduction is more common in treating shoulder dislocations than open reductions, but if closed reduction is unsuccessful, then surgery may be required. I think surgery is about as common as the x-ray at this altitude.’ Despite his carefulness, it took Reid several tries to get the shoulder back in its place, by which time Rossi would have been perfectly happy to walk the distance to Grenoble with a dislocated shoulder for all the pain Reid was causing him.

‘Are you two alright down there?’ came Morgan’s amused voice.

‘Fine,’ came two replies in unison. ‘How’s the head?’ asked Rossi.

‘A lot better than your shoulder, it seems. I don’t think I want to be you right now.’

‘And why’s that.’ Rossi didn’t like her tone of voice – there was something foreboding about it.

‘This cliff edge runs around for about seven miles in either direction. You’ll be spending the next few hours alone with Reid.’ Rossi remembered the last “roadtrip,” and was immediately thankful for the inherent lack of audiobooks currently in their possession.

‘Just follow the cliff, and we’ll meet you at the junction,’ Emily instructed them. ‘A fair chunk of the cliff edge is inaccessible from the top, so you may be on your own for a while.

As Reid and Rossi began their separate journey, Morgan turned to Emily. ‘Alright,’ he said. ‘_Now_ will you let me clean up that head wound?’


	14. Chapter 14

Sanity Frontier

** _Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem._ **

_W. Somerset Maugham_

FOURTEEN

They had sat down to rest for just a few minutes, and Emily had almost immediately fallen asleep. Morgan brushed her cheek softly. He vaguely remembered someone – most probably Reid – telling him that the stigmata surrounding sleep after concussions was highly exaggerated. In fact, rest was one of the main prescriptions given to concussion sufferers. It was his just to ensure she didn’t sleep for too long, lest she slip into a coma.

She had been asleep for almost two hours, confident that their route would get them to the rendezvous point several hours before Rossi and Reid anyway; the cliffline twisted and turned unnecessarily, whereas their path was relatively straightforward.

Some time before the muscle paralysis of REM sleep had taken hold, she had rolled onto his lap. He welcomed the extra body heat, and worked rather hard to convince himself that that was all he welcomed.

‘_Please...no_.’ She was sleeptalking, still floating in a dream state. He took a hold of her hand, not wanting to wake her, and yet not wanting her to be alone in her unconscious endeavors.

*              *              *

_She felt her hand tighten. ‘Please, don’t hurt them,’ she whispered. ‘It’s me you wanted. Leave them out of this.’_

_‘_Who do you work for?’ _The question came in Arabic, and yet she chose to reply in English._

_‘I’m a translator. I’m here visiting my mother. Please, don’t hurt them.’ Her voice broke beneath the sobbing, so convincing an act that she almost believed it herself. Screams that were not her own assaulted her ears, the pain evident._

_‘Please...’ she tried again. This time, the response was different. They pulled her to her feet, dragged her to the next room, where a young man was tied to a chair. Only days before it had been their third wedding anniversary, his eyes had been shining, smiling. Now they were bruised, one swollen shut. A thin stream of blood flow from his nostril._

_‘Emily...’ his voice was cracked, and he was in pain as he spoke._

_‘Hassan...’ She looked into his eyes and it broke her. The hurt, the betrayal. She turned to her captor, mouth open, tears staining her cheeks. Right now she would tell him that Santa Claus existed, just to get him to stop._

_‘CIA,’ she said, and hated herself for it. The self-loathing compounded when the captor pulled a weapon and fired a single shot. Hassan slumped in his chair, blood leaking from the wound in his chest._

_Emily stared in disbelief. She went to his side, holding him until they dragged her away._

_He threw her into the cell, taking no care to stop the bruising._

_‘_We will continue tomorrow. Your husband may be dead, but do not forget your son is not.’ _His voice sounded almost gleeful, as if torturing one more victim would arouse him. It was that thought alone that sent her to pounding on the walls, screaming for help._

*              *              *

Morgan shook her awake roughly once the screaming had started. The first one had pierced the morning air, echoing throughout the mountain range. He was sure that Reid and Rossi would have heard it, and quickened their pace accordingly.

‘Hey, hey. Emily, it’s okay.’ He held her tightly. ‘It was just a dream.’ She leaned into his embrace, oblivious to any possible ulterior motives.

‘It felt so real,’ she said coarsely, suddenly aware of her wet cheeks.

‘They say vivid dreaming is one of the symptoms of SSRI discontinuation syndrome.’ It was another random fact he had picked up from Reid, one of many after the spiel the young genius had embarked on upon learning of Emily’s prescription.

‘How did you- You know what, never mind.’ She realized that even a layman would have noticed her change in behavior after losing her pills. It was almost too much to hope that Morgan wouldn’t have noticed. ‘SSRI discontinuation syndrome usually only occurs after four weeks of prescription. I’ve barely been taking them three.’

‘I don’t think the stress would have helped,’ commented Morgan.

‘Or the concussion, or the painkillers,’ she added.

‘Did you want to talk about it?’

She hesitated. She did want to talk about it, she really did. Almost fourteen years this had been bottled up inside her, and every trauma since then had only piled on top of the bottleneck. To let out everything, then she might truly have some sort of freedom. She had already told him part of the story. That part had been easy to get out. The rest, the overwhelming guilt, the emptiness, that was a little harder.

She noticed then that he was still holding her, and was glad of it, because as soon as she started emptying the rest of the skeletons from her closet, she knew that she would need it.

Taking a deep breath, Emily closed her eyes and began to talk.


	15. Chapter 15

Sanity Frontier

** _Look not mournfully into the past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the present. It is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy future, without fear._ **

_Henry Wadsworth Longfellow_

FIFTEEN

They were perhaps half of the way along the cliffline when they heard the first scream.

‘Emily.’ Though he had never heard such a high pitched scream from Emily before, Reid recognised it almost immediately. ‘Do you think they’re in trouble?’ he asked Rossi.

Rossi was sweating heavily; walking with injured limbs was far more arduous than he had anticipated. ‘If they are, there’s nothing we can do about it. Except maybe hobble faster.’

‘Do you need help?’ It was the third time Reid had asked the question, and the third time Rossi had refused. Stubbornness was a value that was omnipresent in most of the team, even if it wasn’t always to their advantage.

They continued to walk, or in Rossi’s case, hobble, stopping when Reid put up a hand. ‘Do you hear that?’

It was a strange buzzing sound, one that they’d heard all too many times before.

‘Helicopter,’ grunted Rossi.

In light of their bizarre game of cat and mouse, they had all but forgotten about the raging cabin fire. It had been more than twelve hours since the blaze had lit, and still smoke curled thickly towards the sky, prominent enough to garner the attention of any officials.

They hobbled just a little bit faster.

*             *             *

Emily and Morgan saw the helicopter just after Reid and Rossi heard it. It stood out against the stark white of the mountain range.

‘It’s checking out the cabin,’ observed Morgan. ‘Or what’s left of it.’

Emily thought about the cabin and its most recent occupants. ‘What did you do with those two French guys?’ she asked. She had been a little bit out of it, and had almost forgotten the reason they were in the middle of the French wilderness.

‘Tied them to a tree,’ offered Morgan somewhat sheepishly. Now that he thought about it, it did seem a little cliché.

‘I hope your Boy Scout knots are up to scratch.’

‘We should probably get to the cabin before that helicopter leaves,’ Morgan pointed out. Emily nodded in agreement.

‘You go to the cabin; I’ll meet up with Reid and Rossi. You can get there from here?’

‘I’ll follow the smoke,’ he assured her, touching her shoulder. He let it linger just a little bit longer than he normally would have. Her revelations were still processing in his mind. He didn’t quite understand how she could have been so calm after having kept the secret for fourteen years. He accepted her compartmentalisation excuse for some things, cases mostly. But this was another thing entirely.

Dissociation, emotional detachment. Possibilities raced through his mind.

‘The cabin?’ she reminded him.

‘Right.’ He took the hand off her shoulder, albeit reluctantly. ‘Be careful,’ he warned, trudging off in the direction of the cabin.

‘We’ll meet you back at the cabin in around an hour,’ Emily instructed him, before she limped off towards the rendezvous point.


	16. Chapter 16

Sanity Frontier

** _Life only demands from you the strength you possess. Only one feat is possible - not to have run away._ **

_Dag Hammarskjold_

SIXTEEN

It would take a rather persuasive person to convince Derek Morgan that he didn’t look like an idiot, jumping about, attempting to gain the attention of the helicopter. He stopped, feeling defeated, as the helicopter retreated. Soon, though, he realised that it wasn’t flying back to Grenoble – it was landing. Evidently, there was a clearing large enough for the procedure in the direction of flight. He ran towards the still smoking cabin, waiting for the help that would soon come.

When it did come, he hit a second barrier. The language barrier.

‘_Parlez-vous anglais?_’ He knew his accent and pronunciation were terrible, but he knew those few words at least. Even if they were not understood by his rescuers, it would have been enough to inform them that he did not speak French very well at all.

Thankfully, an answer came back as _‘Oui_.’

He identified himself as an American law enforcement agent. Though they had no jurisdiction beyond American soil, he hoped that it would at least garner him some good reputation with the French officials.

‘What happened here?’ came the inevitable question, and, try as he might, Morgan realised that he really had absolutely no idea what was going on in these woods.

*             *             *

She reached the rendezvous point at least ten minutes before them, revelling in the merging of the precipice and the base. So, she waited, leaning up against a nearby tree.

‘Nice acoustics in these mountains,’ came the eventual rib. Emily rolled her eyes in response, having been unable to come up with an appropriate verbal response. Her usually acidic wit had been dulled by injury and medication.

‘Morgan went to flag down the helicopter,’ she informed them, as they took a brief rest. ‘We’re meeting him at the cabin.’

They moved more quickly this time, overcome with the hope of escaping the hellish disaster their holiday had turned out to be.

‘Reid! Emily! Dave!’ They heard Morgan’s voice from afar.

‘Yeah, we’re coming,’ called back Rossi.

The next ten minutes were three times as hectic as their past two days had been. There were questions to be answered, medical attention to be administered, and people to be contacted. Morgan did his best to give directions back to the location of the French serial killers. Emily told an official the full tale in tired French, as someone that she assumed was a paramedic of some variety examined her head and leg wound.

Reid took it upon himself to call Hotch. Let him know exactly what had happened. The unit chief answered after only one ring.

‘Hotchner.’

‘Hotch, it’s Reid.’ He wasn’t quite sure of the signal strength, and overcompensated with volume.

‘Aren’t you supposed to be hiking?’ He didn’t sound tired, despite the fact that – by Reid’s calculations – it was around 5am Hotch’s time.

‘We ran into a little trouble.’

There was silence on the other end of the line. Exasperated, Hotch said eventually, ‘What kind of trouble?’

‘Well, two French serial killers were using the cabin as a hideout.’ It sounded ludicrous, and rather ironic, almost. That they had gone on holiday, only to end up doing what they did every day.

‘Is everyone alright?’

‘Paramedics are checking them out now, but they should be fine. I just thought you ought to know.’

‘We may be coming back early,’ Rossi called out, as a second paramedic splinted his arm.

‘Make sure Garcia doesn’t throw a welcome back party,’ added Emily. The last time Garcia had thrown a surprise party, Morgan had almost shot Kevin accidentally. They didn’t have surprise parties anymore.

‘And get the scotch out,’ Rossi concluded, satisfied that his needs were being met.

Reid heard cries in the background.

‘I have to go,’ said Hotch. ‘Jack just woke up.’

‘We’ll call you when we get in,’ Reid assured him.

‘Providing we don’t run into any more serial killers,’ Morgan said from beside him. His hands were on his hips, and he was grinning wildly, though he had no idea why. Reid picked up on it immediately after handing the satellite phone back to its owner.

‘Morgan, why are you laughing? We could have died. Seriously.’ He looked around, and noticed that both Emily and Rossi were both smiling too.

‘You’ve got to admit, it’s pretty funny in a macabre kind of way,’ said Emily. ‘Out of all the places we could have gone, we chose the one place there were active serial killers. Kind of bad luck for them.’ Reid nodded, there was some kind of bizarre humour in it all.

‘Just think,’ he said. ‘We almost went to Hawaii.’

‘I wonder what kind of serial killers they’ve got there,’ mused Rossi. Pretty soon they were all laughing, oblivious to the strange looks from those around them.

*             *             *

Morgan and Emily shared a cab from the airport; their plane had gotten in at two am, and they didn’t want to burden their colleagues with an early morning pickup.

‘You think he did that on purpose?’ Rossi had dragged Reid away, assuring the youngest agent that they could find their own cab.

‘Almost definitely,’ agreed Morgan.

She invited him up for coffee, specifying that she actually meant real coffee, and not euphemism coffee.

‘Do you want me to stay?’ he asked, after she handed him a third cup of coffee. After all that caffeine, he wouldn’t be sleeping anyway.

She raised an eyebrow, and he backpedalled swiftly. ‘In case of nightmares, I mean.’ She had had two more on the plane, and while there was no screaming or public humiliation, she had still woken up shaken.

‘It wouldn’t go amiss.’ She chose her words carefully, not wanting to sound too eager, or too negative.

It was a comfort thing. They both knew it wasn’t the right time to start planting forbidden kisses, but that didn’t preclude the comfort they got from just holding each other.

Half an hour later, she was asleep, fingers intertwined with his, and for the first time in what felt like years, she slept without a single negative thought entering her mind.

 


	17. Chapter 17

Sanity Frontier

** _Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb._ **

_Sir Winston Churchill_

EPILOGUE

It had been almost two months since the “France incident”, as it would thereafter be remembered as. Reid was significantly upset that they had missed Halloween due to the trying nature of their latest case; it had taken them almost two weeks to locate the unsub. Now, though, he was trying to convince them to attend his – admittedly, rather late – Halloween party.

‘It’s kind of short notice, Reid,’ complained Emily, as they walked back to the bullpen. ‘What am I going to wear?’

‘I think you could do a pretty convincing Princess Leia,’ joked Morgan.

‘I am not doing the Danish hair, thank-you very much.’

‘There’s always the metal bikini.’ Reid spoke just loud enough for Morgan to hear him, and was thus unprepared for Emily’s swift elbow to the ribs.

‘Did you hear that Reid tried convincing JJ to name her son Luke?’

‘I didn’t,’ Emily grinned. She was almost thankful that JJ had eventually decided on Henry. Her smile dropped as she saw who was waiting at her desk. ‘Oh no,’ she groaned. It was her mother.

‘Do you want moral support?’ asked Morgan.

‘Please.’ She welcomed their company, even if it was only to stop her from lashing out at her mother. She had the strangest desire to be polite in their presence.

‘Hello mother.’ She had straightened her blouse, and flicked the dirt off her pant legs, and yet she still felt that she was being silently criticised.

‘I left a message on your answering machine. Did you get it?’ There wasn’t even so much as a hello. Straight to business, as usual.

‘I’ve been in California for the past two weeks. I haven’t been home yet.’ She felt somewhat irritated. Her mother exuded an air of crippling self-importance, as if anything Emily did was somehow less significant.

‘I left the message almost a month ago, Emily.’ Truth be told, she had taken to deleting all of her mother’s messages. It seemed easier to deal with the inevitable outburst than to attend a function, or turn down a suitor.

‘Perhaps we should take this elsewhere.’ Elizabeth Prentiss eyed Morgan and Reid warily. ‘Agent Hotchner gave me permission to use the conference room.’

‘Here is fine,’ Emily replied bluntly.

‘This is a delicate matter, Emily, I would prefer if we...’ she trailed off, something behind Emily catching her eye.

Before Emily had a chance to see what it was, she heard a voice calling her name. It was not her mother’s voice, but a voice she had only heard in nightmares for the past fourteen years. Every night, for weeks on end, she would hear his screams, over and over again. It was a blade to the heart, and it just kept on stabbing.

Morgan noticed the look on her face. It was a mix between shock, confusion, fear and pain. She relaxed her features, trying to keep the feelings from overwhelming her. Slowly, she turned. Her mother was speaking, but she blocked out the words. All she wanted was to look at his face.

It was worn, every bit of torture he had experienced still haunted him. His eyes were hollowed, his cheeks gaunt. Beneath the Pandora’s Box of emotion that graced him, she sensed that tiny bit of hope.

‘Hassan,’ she said. She hadn’t spoken his name outside of sleep for a long time now. Morgan’s eyes widened, recognising the name from her series of nightmares, and the explanation that accompanied them.

Without thinking, Hassan embraced her in a tight hug. She couldn’t move, and she wasn’t quite sure she wanted to. Finally, he let go.

Elizabeth Prentiss looked towards Morgan and Reid. ‘Now, perhaps, could we have some privacy?’

Not wanting to see the reaction on her colleagues’ faces, Emily looked to the ground as she followed Hassan and her mother into the BAU conference room.

 

 


End file.
